How does an undelivered SMS impact your business?
Lost opportunity cost
What is the cost of a lost opportunity? Sample this.
Since most organizations send messages in high volumes, a difference in delivery rate of 1-2% has a significant indirect cost. Sadly, this often tends to be overlooked. Here’s the math.
Suppose an enterprise sends 1,00,000 messages. The SMS service provider claims to have delivered 98% of these messages, which means 2% of 2,000 messages weren’t delivered due to various reasons. The impact of those undelivered messages will depend on the intention of the messages and what it would have meant for the customer.
Broken customer journey
At a time when businesses keep their customers at the core, broken customer journeys can only mean harm. Customers expect businesses to keep them updated about everything, be it new launches, product recommendations, product upgrades, deals, and discounts etc., besides important transactional updates. If the customer does not receive these communications on time, chances are they will switch over to your competitors who may be able to deliver a superior customer experience.
Loss of credibility
At a time when companies are focusing on customer retention, an undelivered message or multiple instances of SMS delivery failure can lead to loss of trust among customers. This in turn can lead to your customers mistrusting you or they may not be confident about a uniform customer experience. Take for example, the following situation.
On shopping for merchandise worth Rs 10,000, Kritika receives an attractive offer of 20% off on her next purchase, conveyed through SMS the very next day. As a regular customer of this retail outlet, Kritika is quite excited about the offer. This prompts her very good friend Ashi to go shopping for the same amount. Unfortunately, this mass offer was not rolled out to her and this was not the first time. In this case the high intent customer who is a rightful candidate to get a discount has just missed receiving the brand message on this limited period offer but the enterprise had no clue about it. Ashi feels that she should switch to another retail outlet.
Scope for future losses
Lack of transparency can cause losses to an extent that may not be identified. For example, false positive SMS deliveries can be misleading and can throw up wrong insights adding up to a completely flawed business view. Insights based on wrong assumptions can only mean that the business ends up directing its efforts in the wrong direction. Not just that, if it is a case of fake DLRs, the enterprise will end up paying for even those SMS that were not even sent to the end user.
How can enterprises achieve transparency in SMS delivery?
Much before enterprises realized the menace of unreliable message delivery, SMSGATEWAYHUB stepped in with a pioneer product, SMSGATEWAYHUB Trust. It gives enterprises a chance to evaluate all their partners fairly. Businesses can now:
Keep messaging transparent: Get actionable insights into SMS delivery reports
Identify trusted messaging partners: Drive business goals with the right partner!
Maximize ROI: Turn lost opportunity costs into potential gains
Wondering how?
SMSGATEWAYHUB Trust enables enterprises to access Trust scores that helps them to track the SLA. Scores are calculated based on how many messages were actually delivered to the device and how many failed. The resultant score, expressed in percentage gives a comprehensive picture to the enterprise. Trust scores can be calculated for both bulk campaigns as well as transactional traffic. Trust scores of less than 90% indicate that some of the positive delivery reports may be misleading and that the customer has not received the SMS.
Trust scores in the yellow range, that is between 90-95% indicates that the messaging partner is somewhat reliable. A score of 95% and above means that your messaging partner has rightly projected the delivery reports. Basis the score, an enterprise can choose to be in complete control of the messaging ecosystem, improving customer experience by a significant measure.
This helps you:
- Track vendor delivery: Configure your vendors and capture their delivery status for specific messages
- Compare against actual message status: Validate the vendor delivery reports against the actual delivery status for specific messages
- Check trust score: Analyze and identify the most transparent and trusted vendor
CPaaS players also have a major role to play. They must ensure that they have the best infrastructure to land the SMS in the inbox of the intended recipient. There are far-reaching implications of an SMS non-delivery.
Enterprises, when a high-intent customer does not receive your crucial message, hence is not nudged at the right time turning it into a lost opportunity cost for your business. Let that not be your enterprise story!
Have questions or need a demo? Contact us: 1800 102 1822